Design Blueprint: Link Budget for Free-Space Laser Time Transfer Between Ground Clock Stations

Design blueprint derived from the source paper (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24155028): Free-space links free a clock comparison from fibre geography, at the price of geometric loss and atmospheric variability. A credible design must show received power, photon rate and timing jitter together, because a link that closes in power can still fail in timing precision. This paper sizes a ground-station laser time-transfer terminal with stated apertures and transmit power, propagates the geometric loss over an eight-hundred-kilometre path, and converts the resulting timing jitter into a range and potential equivalent. The computed results, taken from the deposited script, are as follow Status: DESIGN BLUEPRINT — SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED — NOT BUILT. All numbers are simulated values from the source paper's computation, deposited with this blueprint as compute.py and results.json. AI-use disclosure: Dave, an AI research system, assisted with the computation and drafting under the author's direction; author of record William Alexander Aldred.